


Darkness Taking Dawn

by intentioncraft



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Angst, Body Horror, Character Death, Franken!Dean, Frankenstein AU, Gen, Gore, Historical Inaccuracy, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Multi, No Romance, One-sided Dean/Crowley, POV Alternating, Past Castiel/Dean Winchester, Scientific Handwaving, Suicidal Thoughts, Supernatural Elements, Vampire!Benny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-04-10 03:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4375844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wants to close his eyes again and go back to that place deep in his mind, swimming through the better memories of his thirty years toward the soothing light of timeless, compressed nothingness of death. But each time he tries to go back to sleep, all he meets is more pain, more frustration, and the beginnings of an anger so profound that he can’t observe it too closely for fear of the thoughts it stirs in him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm fascinated by how often the idea of a franken!Dean comes up and finally decided to do something about it. Takes place in an alternate earth, kind of. The science and biology is gonna be as the plot demands. Ratings and tags will change as I go along.
> 
> Unbeta'd. This is just for fun! Or at least my screwball idea of it.

There’s smoke behind his eyes and it burns to look inward, but it hurts just as much to look out because of the greyish-white fog sitting over his eyeballs, like staring through the thickest morning gloom. His consciousness darts side to side as he tries to peer through the film, and a crushing ache builds in his skull for the effort. What he can see of the space he’s in, still hazy and blurry, is that it’s familiar, and that it’s his.

_Was_ his. It shouldn't be anymore.

Perhaps if Dean hadn't retained the memories of a blade puncturing his chest, sliding and piercing coldly straight through a few extremely vital organs, the stiffness in his limbs might not be as repulsive to think about. It might even feel as though he’s simply waking up from a fever, from a long sickness that he passed through, survived, but since he believes with all his heart that this body should be dead, the ugly tug at his joints, it must be _rigor mortis_ fighting him as he tries to restore control of his limbs. The gristly creaking and crunching and snapping of hardened joints and muscles puts an itch in his lungs itch to laugh wretchedly, of all things, because it’s so loathsome, so disgusting and he just wants to quit. He wants to close his eyes again and go back to that place deep in his mind, swimming through the better memories of his thirty years toward the soothing light of timeless, compressed nothingness of death. But each time he tries to go back to sleep, all he meets is more pain, more frustration, and the beginnings of an anger so profound that he can’t observe it too closely for fear of the thoughts it stirs in him.

After a time, he’s aware enough to realize he's naked except for the sheet covering his body, or what he's decided to call his body since he seems to have exclusive control of it, blanketing him neck to toes. It's white, scratchy, and smells vaguely familiar but in a half-remembered way, as though he's experiencing it secondhand, and it's overpowered by the sweet, chemical smell that he knows is coming from him, from what should be a rotting corpse but is instead trapped someplace between new death and decay. The sheets sting where they make contact with his flesh, nerves alight with overstimulation like the bedding is brushing against a burn or an open wound, but he has little time to consider the sharp streaks of pain scoring his skin when he sees a fuzzy shadow looming over him, tall and long and living.

"Dean! Dean, you're awake? Oh my God, That's…that’s incredible. Unbelievable. Can you hear me? Dean, can you hear me? Please say something."

The voice speaking to him, like the smell of the sheets, is familiar, but disturbed. Off-key, an untuned piano, a door note quite closed at night. Like every inch of him is skewed slightly to the left and he can't correct the tilt to hear truthfully.

"He said it worked. He said you'd be fine," Sam says over the tightness of an unspent sob. He's lower now, kneeling beside where Dean lays on the bed and places his large hands heavily on the edge of the mattress as he searches for Dean's under the covers.

Dean flinches away, a wet pop and a searing agony shoots up his wrist.

"Wh...wh—" Dean stops, put off by the sound of his own voice. It's smooth, almost young again. Maybe something is wrong with his hearing, something damaged that couldn’t be fixed, because Sam’s voice doesn’t sound right either. The pain in his throat from speaking lances his senses and makes his head ring, but he has to get this one word out, even if it puts him unconscious again, "Wh—"

"It's all right. Don't...I’m sorry, it’s too much. You don't have to talk if you’re not ready. Cas said it might take a while for you to come back all the way," Sam says, "God, is it good to hear your voice, though."

Dean wants to ask him whose voice he's hearing, exactly, if he sounds strange to Sam, too. But the notion alone and all the effort it would drain from him to arrange those words in the correct order and work the tongue in his mouth over the right shapes, makes him dizzy and tired, and even if he could find the energy to make noise, all Dean would want to do is scream.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mild weather is a distant memory, and Captain Lafitte finds himself regretting his false enthusiasm and promises of glory and fame, even if they were not for him but for his crew. Guilt falls over him like a darkness every time he lays down in his bunk.

_Farewell, my dear Andrea. If you hear from me never again, please let your mourning be brief and allow yourself to quickly find_   
_happiness in the arms of someone more deserving than myself of your compassion. I’m sorry for ever misleading you, and despite_   
_my evil nature each night I pray for Heaven to shine on you all your life, In another world, another life, I will tell you in person all  
of the things written in the stillness of my heart._

_Yours,  
Benny Lafitte_

—

Captain Lafitte looks out on the desolate waters of the far northern seas, cataloguing the horizon for anomalous ice floes, any unusual sightings at all. This far north, it would most certainly be an event worth noting to see another ship, for example, another weary crew, but upon leaving the town of Archangel, they had not encountered another human life in two weeks.

The silence weighs on the crew like the heavy arctic wind. Each passing glacier, each time the sun dips so low in the sky only to touch the surface of the icy water, an eerie midnight light spread over the Atlantic, the promise of the temperate paradise of the North Pole creeps further and further away from the reach of the sailors’ minds. Mild weather is a distant memory, and Captain Lafitte finds himself regretting his false enthusiasm and promises of glory and fame, even if they were not for him but for his crew. Guilt falls over him like a darkness every time he lays down in his bunk. He tries to start conversation with the crew, tries to engage them to keep their spirits up so they can reach their destination in good spirits, but they view him simply as an employer, not a friend, and their resentment grows each day. The absence of conversation drags him deeper into despair, until the only thing moving him forward is, literally, the pull of the cold ocean.

The wind is calm today, at least, and he feels slightly more at ease upon finishing his letter to Andrea even if she will not and cannot respond, even if he never sees her writing or hears her words again. It’s for the better, but the way he left her, he could not leave her with no explanation at all. That he committed his tale to paper, it seems, is all it takes to make this seem real, to dispel the dreamlike quality to the clear blue sky and the never-ending daylight, the dark blue waves and the striking blue glaciers.

If he did not write his intentions down, he might not even be certain that he is still alive, for lack of a term, and if he can't be certain of that, then he will never be certain of his death.

“Captain!” A voice carries over from the starboard side, “Captain, come here!”

Lafitte shoves his hands in his pockets, the cold thin air chilling even his skin. The men are gathered at the side of the ship, pointing at one of the massive glacial landmasses.

“What is it?”

“It’s a person, Captain. A man,” says the young cabin boy, Alfred – Alfie, as the other men affectionately call him, “On the ice.”

Lafitte looks out to where the men are pointing and, sure enough, a figure moves swiftly across the white landscape. The sun mirrors off the water, making it difficult to distinguish the features of the person gliding along on a sledge pulled by a team of large wolfish dogs, but from what Lafitte can glean at this distance, the figure is most likely a man.

“He’s clearly a madman who–” the crew member Cecil snarls derisively, and then trails off when she notices Lafitte standing right next to her with a neutral warning on his face. Cecil has made every effort to avoid Lafitte’s attention on their journey, but he’s well aware that the young shiphand is actually called Cecily, the disguised runaway daughter of a bookseller living back in St. Michael’s Bay, their second last stop before heading north.

“Has he seen us?” Lafitte asks nobody in particular.

“Can’t see how he could miss us,” Alfie replies. Lafitte nods in ascent. How indeed could a single man overlook the large ship cutting the waves and speeding along in the same direction as he?

“Hello!” one of the men calls, his greeting bounces off the ice hollowly.

The figure makes no indication to have heard the call, speeding along with just as much single-minded determination. It makes Captain Lafitte wonder not only the identity of this man, but also what purpose could possess any human at all to venture this far north on his own with nothing but a sledge of supplies and the company of a few animals.

“D’you suppose he’s dead? Frozen stiff to his sled?”

“No, I believe he’s alive. He’s still steering those dogs, see?”

“Should we approach? Offer our aid?”

The crew discusses options, gradually moving away from the side of the ship to turn toward each other in heated debate. Lafitte, however, steps closer to the railing and squints past the blinding white reflection of the sun on the water. The roar of the waves slicing below his ship and the howling of the arctic wind sear his keen senses, put a ring in his ears, the sound of eons. But over the ancient, undisturbed noises, he can make out the the sound of the man’s heart beating, strong and warm but frantic, his breath sharpened by the frigid air. He's very alive, but those signs of life alone give Lafitte no surety that he even realizes they are trying to get his attention. He waves to his men to ring the bell.

The clear sound of the bell echoes sharply over the ice, and the man's heartbeat picks up, his breath stills for a moment as he hesitates, torn between decisions, the need for a break and for warmth battling with some other cause. He's hellbent, evidently, on some manic mission in the north.

Lafitte’s mouth settles into a grim line. Cecily, deceptive as she is, is not unintelligent. The northern regions attract a certain type of madman. More than one, it seems.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When he finally is able to speak a sentence, he asks Sam how long he was out.
> 
> Sam skirts the answer by telling Dean, “A long time.”

Most of the time, it feels like he’s only half awake, dreaming constantly through the minutes of his life but he never truly sleeps again. Days pass and Dean only notices how many by how often Sam’s clothes change. He keeps track of it in his mind easily, having not much else to think about other than the pain that burdens him constantly. Sam tries to bring him medicine to help with the agony, but whatever Dean swallows comes back up within seconds, his esophagus completely uncooperative. That troubles Sam, because it also means Dean can’t eat or drink And although he doesn’t mention it outright, Dean can read the furrows etched deep on his brother’s forehead, but after several days, Dean hasn’t succumbed to hunger or thirst so Sam’s worries gradually retreat.

Still, Sam looks a lot older than he did before Dean…before he was stabbed through the heart. Their conversations are one-sided for about a week with Dean watching more than listening. He soaks in the way Sam’s mouth never goes beyond a brief, uncomfortable smile, a silent misery pervading his every word when he's in Dean's presence. Dean memorizes the lines he’s never noticed on his brother’s face before, the colourless cast to his cheeks, the unkempt facial hair. When he finally is able to speak a sentence, he asks Sam how long he was out.

Sam skirts the answer by telling Dean, “A long time.”

All the while, Sam is his only visitor even though Sam mentions Castiel regularly and Crowley more than once. From Sam’s talking, Dean gathers that those two, Castiel more than Crowley, were instrumental in saving his life and that Sam is immensely grateful to Cas and only grudgingly accepting of Crowley’s part in it. Dean withholds his questions, eager to ask Castiel himself how he did it, but the man never comes to see Dean, never comes to check on him once, and after eleven days of lying in bed, Dean asks Sam if he can go see Cas to get his answers if Cas won't come to him.

Sam hesitates, and that’s what sets a curl of disquiet in Dean and he gets more insistent, starts to lift the sheets off his body for the first time and that’s when Sam stops him and obliges him. He urges Dean to keep his eyes forward, on him, up and away from whatever it is Sam doesn’t want him to see, as the two of them work out how they might get Dean out of bed. He’s aware that there’s something awful being hidden from him in plain sight, just under the sheets that he hasn’t lifted for how cold he feels, but Dean focuses on ignoring the pain that plagues every joint in his body and clumsily shuffles to the side of the bed anyhow, the sheets falling and exposing his skin to the open air. He shivers, but he trains his throbbing sight on his younger brother as the soles of his feet, hard and sore, find the floor. The contact is oddly numb but he manages to concentrate his muscular impulses to straighten both legs and stand, with Sam’s help, for a full four seconds before something creaks, then cracks, and the next thing Dean knows he’s kneeling, but can only feel the floor on one knee.

“Dean, shit, wait. Fuck,” Sam’s voice above him is staccato with panic, and Dean tries to say don’t worry about it, didn’t expect to get it on the first try, right as he looks down, and sees past everything that his right leg has almost entirely detached from his knee.

“Sam…” he says weakly, hands clutching the hem of his brother’s shirt, “Sam…”

“Dean, don’t panic. Cas said this might happen if we go too quickly. It’s my fault, I didn’t want to get you out of bed but I…it’s still too soon. It’s fine, though. He has spares. We can fix your leg.”

Dean’s voice is empty of all feeling when he speaks, “That’s not my leg.”

“We’ll find a better one,” Sam’s reply is dismissive as he tries to pull Dean to his feet. His foot. The other hangs uselessly at the end of a thin grey ankle, the muscles in his calf little more than dead meat, thick threads of some kind of stitching dangling from his knee, a black sludge dripping onto the floor. Dean’s insides are coiled inside him but there’s nothing in his stomach to expel, not even his own fluids, as he realizes what exactly he is. He gags painfully a few times, but wills his body to stop because he’s worried about what kind of internal damage the heaving might bring about.

“Where’s my leg, Sam?” he asks after he recovers the use of his voice.

“Dean, don’t worry about it. Please? We’ll take care of it for you. You just have to rest some more.”

“Listen to me,” Dean puts his weight on Sam’s forearms until Sam is leaning away from him in -- what, Dean wonders. Fear? Disgust” “I need to know what happened. You can’t…you can’t keep this from me, Sam. You can’t pretend that there’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Dean, wait—”

“No, no,” Dean says wheezily. He can _feel_ the dead weight of the leg, but feels nothing else to make it move, “A mirror. Get a mirror. Do it now, Sam.”

Sam looks as though he’ll start to cry, and Dean wishes he would. Angrily, he wishes his brother would show some kind of remorse for whatever it is that’s happened to Dean, whatever was _done_ to him. But Sam only helps Dean sit, turns away, and takes down from the wall the small round mirror that belonged to their mother, Mary, the metal frame blackened from the fire that destroyed their home.

Rather than letting Dean take it, Sam holds it up in front of him,

And that's when he realizes, he’s not Dean.

There’s about two-thirds of his face that he recognizes, and now that he’s broken through that revelation he finally looks down, one of his hands is familiar, the one that Sam has been occasionally holding onto over the past week, but the rest is…foreign, unknown. Nothing matches, nothing looks the same. He looks back at the mirror hoping to see something that makes sense, but black stitches mar the curve of his jaw,  wrap around his entire neck and connects discoloured patches of skin. From his neck down, a slightly different shade of grey than the skin on his face, but he can’t even take into account the overall greyness, more green or more yellow in some spots, because this is not him. This body is not his, it doesn’t even look close to his and when he asks Sam whose meat he’s wearing, his brother shrugs and says something about there being a lot of unmarked graves around.

“You did this,” Dean says. His voicebox — whosever’s it is — cooperates and his words come out a deadly whisper.

“Cas and Crowley and me,” Sam replies stiffly, “Look, some of you…your parts…were already too decomposed for us to use when we figured it out. We tried, Dean. We did.”

“Decomposed,” Dean stares at his hideous reflection for another second and then grabs it with both hands, yanks it from Sam and flings the mirror at the far wall as hard as he can. The shattering sound is high and sharp and Sam’s entire body winces, “So I was dead. _Rotting_.”

Sam shrugs, “Some of you. We found a way though. Cas and Crowley, mostly, but we did it,” he says, tone rising petulantly, “We _saved_ you, Dean.”

“No, you didn't save me,” Dean replies, low and vicious. He thought the effort it took to throw the mirror would have depleted his reserves built up over eleven days, but his wrists vibrate with the compulsion to rip something into shreds the way he was ripped into shreds. To destroy someone the way he was destroyed. The overwhelming, unnamed rage he felt when he first woke is suddenly as clear to him as though it were a separate entity in the room with him, standing at his side, “You cursed me.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lafitte waves his people back to work but remains along the railing with his eyes fixed on the man. His nostrils flare as a shrill wind carries over the scent of slow, still-living decay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything I know about boats and sailing is from Google and Assassin's Creed.

_“I won’t do it.”_

_“It makes sense. Benny, it’s the_ only _thing that makes sense,” she shakes with anger and frustration. But Benny can’t do this for her, he can’t do it_ to _her. Never._

_“You think it does but if you trust me, you’ll believe this: It’s not worth it. The risk, the kinds of people who rid the world of monsters, the constant dread for what you are, there’s no reward worth an eternity alone.”_

_“What about love? What about us?” Andrea’s dark hair sticks to her cheeks. Her face glows like sunset aflame on the open ocean._

_“You can never know, darling. You can’t predict. Once you change, everything changes.”_

—

"Carry on," the man calls over the closing distance between himself and Lafitte’s ship, the echoes of his words loud and sharp on the frigid air, like ice cracking under weight. The man’s voice is weak and cold from disuse but he’s well within earshot of the regular crew members, and they turn to one another in question, and then turn to Lafitte for guidance. He’s tempted to heed the traveler’s wishes, but Lafitte senses what the others can’t: the man’s health is not good. His exhaustion is more than can be cured by rest, and he will not survive much longer on his own. He may not survive long _with_ Lafitte’s aid.

"I don’t need your help."

Nonetheless, the traveler has halted his team of dogs and appears to hesitate on leaving, and even if he wished to, Lafitte gathers it wouldn’t be of any use because as soon as he stopped, the dogs lost their frenzied momentum. Now they pant and lie down on the ice, sides heaving and mouths open and whining. They're utterly exhausted from near constant work.

Lafitte waves his people back to work but remains along the railing with his eyes fixed on the man. His nostrils flare as a shrill wind carries over the scent of slow, still-living decay.

He makes up his mind and clears his throat, "Come inside to warm up and rest. Your companions look like they could use a meal and a break," Lafitte says over the water, "We travel light, but we have enough for one more explorer and his team of dogs," The men will likely protest but their rations for the journey will hold out. Lafitte was counted among those rations so they always have a bit extra.

The man — his exposed skin a motley of colours from the biting wind — looks to his dogs,  shoulders slumping defeat when he realizes Lafitte has a point. However long he's been travelling north, Lafitte isn't certain he's taken a break longer than a few minutes, or if he’s eaten anything in the past day, or past two days. It's a miracle the he and the animals are still alive.

Lafitte signals Cecily and Alfie to go ready something for the man and his dogs to eat. The two scamper below deck without an argument. Gordon Walker barely needs a word and he’s steering the ship closer to the frozen land so they can lay out the gangway for the man to board.

The man, despite his earlier protests, walks stiffly onto the deck. His dogs have to be carried for the most part. Some of them whine and pant, others are too tired to do even that.

Lafitte shakes the traveler’s hand with a cold creak.

“Welcome aboard. I apologize for nagging, but it isn’t my way to leave a man in need behind.”

The man nods quietly and watches as Lafitte’s crew tends to the dogs. They throw blankets over them, patting some warmth into them and crouch down to scratch them behind the ears. The dogs whine and whuff in reply.

“For their sake, I’m grateful for your _nagging_ ,” The man says, humbled. He falls quiet again and eventually wanders over to his dogs, kneeling on the deck to stroke their fur while they eat and drink, talking to them in a low voice. Lafitte watches him, fascinated by how the man seems to be waking up from something, like he was in a trance, or lost in single-minded motivation. He loves these dogs, but something has taken over every waking moment of his life that he's neglected their well-being. 

"Can I ask you a question?" The man stands up after a while, wavering on his feet from his own sickness.

Lafitte shrugs.

"Am I the only traveller you've come across this far north?"

"Since leaving Archangel, yes," Lafitte replies cautiously, "Are you pursuing someone?"

"Something," the man replies cryptically.

"If you are after something, then it would go better for you to travel quickly and more comfortably," he says. Truthfully, he would not mind the extra body. The crew would raise questions, wonder about the nature of their journey if they can take on another person and another quest, but Lafitte senses what plagues this man is not of the natural order, and he's more than a bit intrigued, “Might I ask you a question?”

The man nods, “That's only fair. What do you want to know?”

“What's your name?”

A wind rolls over the icescape, picking up loose snow and swirling it over the deck. Lafitte doesn't feel it, it's just a pressure, a sensation. But the man in front of him steels himself to the bite of the wind. He’s bundled beyond recognition in layer upon layer of clothing, surviving the harsh north through brute force alone. If Lafitte were to guess, however, he’d say the man is easily over six feet tall, muscular and healthy, but the lines around his eyes betray any notion of age.

“Sam Winchester,” he replies when the wind settles at last.

Lafitte bites his lip at the name, recognition sweeping over him and his fingers curl at his sides. It’s far too late; he’s already offered to help the man. He’s already, in a way, won him over. But now he's not sure he can keep it that way, and if it comes to it, Lafitte may have just damned his entire crew.

“You know who I am?”

“I’ve heard," Lafitte replies as steady as he can, "So I’m going to ask again: what are you chasing?”

Winchester’s expression remains neutral, too cold to form anything, no emotion. No scowl, no smirk, nothing.

“I’m chasing a monster.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean sinks himself deeper and deeper into a sleepless, timeless, demi-world where he’s only a floating consciousness, only a well of thoughts, memories, and daydreams and not the hacked up, half-dead pile of sewn-together body parts that he saw in the mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: suicidal contemplation.
> 
> This chapter was tricky.

Sam mostly leaves Dean alone for days after his outburst. He comes in sometimes, like a ghost, but makes his visits short and to the point. Formal. It’s fine, it allows Dean to willingly sink himself deeper and deeper into a sleepless, timeless, demi-world where he’s only a floating consciousness, only a well of thoughts, memories, and daydreams and not the hacked up, half-dead pile of sewn-together body parts that he saw in the mirror.

About a week of this, and Crowley bursts into Dean’s room unannounced, shattering his meditation. His round cheeks glowing and beaming like a groom on his wedding day as he looks down at the thing on the bed.

“Well, it isn’t _that_ bad.”

Dean would argue with him, but now that he's fully aware, his chest aches already, ribs caging him like iron bars with each breath he takes. He hasn’t spoken since his last conversation with Sam apart from a few _yes_ ’s and _no_ ’s. Sam asks perfunctory questions about Dean’s basic functions, if he’s tried eating again, if he even feels hunger, if he’s tried _pissing_ and after awhile Dean realized that it didn’t matter, none of it matters. This body isn’t all his anyway, so what right does he have to an ounce of privacy? He answers all of Sam’s questions in a dead voice. He stops asking to see Castiel.

“The way Sam was talking…” Crowley catches himself before he can divulge what exactly Sam has been telling about Dean, “well, I won’t bore you with the details. You know how your brother is.”

Dean tries to go back to his anti-place, tries to block out Crowley’s voice, his stench, the faint _buzz_ of human presence that only fills the room when others are in it. He keeps his eyelids closed and tries to reduce the quickness of his breathing. It’s worked a few times on Sam. Or, Sam let him think it had.

“No offense, darling, but you’ve never been a good liar. And, between you and I, we both know I’m the best friend you’ve got right now. You sure scared off poor Sam, didn’t you? Weak stomach, that one. He knew what he was asking for, though.”

Dean ditches the act and turns his neck painfully to the table beside the bed. His mother’s mirror is still there, forgotten for almost a week. If he smashes the mirror, he might be able to cut his throat open with the shards before Crowley has a chance to say anything else. Put himself out of the misery of hearing the man’s voice.

Crowley is close; his cologne powerful enough to burn Dean’s nostrils and throat, like he’s oozing sulfur form his pores. Before Dean can think more about the mirror, Crowley puts a clammy hand on Dean’s wrist.

“Fuck yourself, Crowley,” he croaks.

“Tempting, but I don't think you're up for that kind of show right now," Crowley says, "Alas, I’m only the messenger this evening.”

“Yeah,” Dean’s voice barely scrapes out of him, a whisper. He wasted his energy on Crowley, “What’s the message?”

Crowley clears his throat, “Good news, for once in your life. Dear Castiel and I believe we’ve found a leg of suitable height and ripeness for you to stand on,” Crowley’s voice bounces with glee, “You’ll be dancing in no time,” Crowley pats Dean’s wrist. It sends a shiver of pain up Dean’s destroyed nerves.

Once Crowley’s gone, Dean looks at the mirror again and even fingers the edge of the frame.

If he cut his own throat, he wonders how long it would take for them to replace _that_.

—

“Dammit, Cas. Look at me,” Dean demands, _Just once, please, just look — see what I am_. _See what you’ve done._

The scientist, however, acts as though he hasn’t heard a thing and continues to arrange the glimmering metal tools at his work station. Crowley’s a silent spectator, hovering outside the edges of Castiel’s vision because, yeah, despite everything he’s still quite terrified of Castiel. His presence is tolerated only because he’s the one who tied Castiel’s research on reanimation to his own occult practices. 

The lights overhead sear Dean’s senses, burn his cold skin like he's spent hours outside at the height of summer, but it casts an eerie, holy glow over the man who claims to have brought Dean back from the dead.

“Cas, please,” Dean begs again, a bit quieter. His hands ache but he reaches for his friend anyhow.

“Be still,” Castiel replies, colder than Dean’s ever heard him. It grips his heart, stills the breath in his lungs. This isn't the Cas he knows.

Dean tries to sit up. The white sheet slumps down his torso, and he hears Crowley faintly curse _bloody hell_ as the ravaged canvas of skin meets the light, “Cas, I—”

“I said, be still.”

“I will, I’m just—”

A hand on Dean’s chest pushes him back down. Dean’s head bounces off the metal, a sharp ring down his spine as he yelps in surprise. The lights over him spin, and the breath knocked out of him only returns when he gasps painfully as something pierces his skin just inside the elbow. Instinctively, Dean grabs Castiel’s wrist, weak from the blow to his head but still strong enough to leave a mark. He tightens his grip, feeling Castiel straining to free himself. The needle in Dean’s arm stands up on its own.

And still, Castiel stares at _that_.

“Let go of me,” he says simply.

“Why won’t you look at me?”

“I’m trying to work.”

Dean releases Castiel’s arm. The needle in his arm, whatever’s in it, is doing the trick and Dean’s vision goes soft around the edges and his head feels warm. It’s the first time he’s felt this comfortable since waking up, maybe even longer than that, and the metal that hurt so badly when he hit his head just seconds ago suddenly feels like a down-filled pillow as Dean lays back down, his limbs light and painless.

It’s funny, he wants to cry. He’s being given a reprieve from his living hell and it’s suddenly the last thing he wants.

All he wants.

All he wants is someone to realize…

“Cas…”

Before he loses consciousness, he hears a soft, perturbed muttering.

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be.”

—

Dean finally regains his senses again back in his room. The lights are off but even if they weren’t, Dean wouldn’t comprehend a thing but the splintering pain radiating from his knee, up his thigh, down his calf, like fire forged into knives, slicing and burning through his skin like butter. He howls and cries and screams, a louder sound than anything he’s been able to produce since he first woke up. The sound claws from him, echoes inside his head and his room and hopefully down the hall so Sam can hear him, Cas can hear him. So they all hear him.

The taste of blood and the smell of something sour and chemical clogs up in his lungs when he inhales to keep screaming. He starts to cough. It quiets him.

When he reaches blindly for the mirror, his hand slaps clumsily all over the bedside table, fingers curling and shaking around thin air.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lafitte had trusted the man on the ice, the stranger with no name. The man in his cabin was a different tale entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for delayed updates on basically everything, especially shake our souls. i don't have an ETA on that yet.
> 
> this is still unbeta'd and mostly for ~fun~. all mistakes are just my own poor editing.

Night falls. The brilliant aurora of the north ignite the starry sky in dancing flames, blues and greens captivate the Lafitte’s crew through the brief hours when the sun sinks under the horizon. Each clear night is the same spectacle, but somehow they never tire of the massive curtains of light fluttering overhead. Lafitte watches the show by himself from the window of his cabin, charts and maps piled off to the side with his feet crossed atop his desk. The lights catch the white froth of the rear rudders, tinging them in cool hues and casting everything with an unearthly, supernatural glow.

A disquiet falls over him nightly; the rumours about the aurora shared in the south whisper in the shadowy corners of his mind.

Someone coughs, the whispers splintering away like the thinnest layer of frost. His guest, Sam Winchester, lies in Benny’s own bed buried in blankets and furs, wheezing and now shuddering as the hacking fit goes on. For almost two hours, he’s struggled through a deep, imprisoning sleep, shivering and moaning and calling out incoherently once or twice. One of the dogs lies on top of the covers and whines at Lafitte to do something as the man continues to cough.

As Lafitte had suspected early on, Sam was not well. More than could be fixed with a hot meal and a long sleep. He fell apart quickly once his team of dogs were taken care of and he himself filled his stomach with a thin soup and some bread and water. As Lafitte lead the man to his own quarters, he caught a few mutters about wasting food on the walking dead, but elected to ignore it rather than reprimand his crew. Not to mention, Lafitte’s own thoughts about his guest were too clouded to draw an opinion on whether or not rescuing him was worthwhile or a grave mistake.

“Your men don’t like me,” Sam spoke up as soon as he was lying down. His voice was faint and hoarse.

“You’re a stranger. They don’t trust you.”

Sam swallowed and started to cough violently, his entire frame wracked by whatever sickness was gripping his lungs, he folded himself nearly in half, wheezing loudly, even once the fit subsided, “Do you trust me?”

For a moment, Lafitte considered lying. Admittedly, he had trusted the man on the ice, the stranger with no name. The man in his cabin was a different tale entirely.

“We’ll see about that.”

Sam smirked grimly through his pain, “You said you’d heard of me. That means you’re either a hunter, or you’re something else.”

Saying nothing, Lafitte pulled down an extra blanket from beneath his bed and put it on Sam’s lap.

“Where will you sleep?” Sam asked.

Lafitte pauses for a moment before replying, “Get some rest. You need it.”

And two hours of fitful, dream-laden sleep was all Sam managed before his coughing woke him again. This time, after the fit subsides, Lafitte smells iron and salt on the air and looks to his guest just as he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, staring at it momentarily before wiping it on his shirt. Having removed most of his outer layers to let them dry, he ruffles his long greasy hair and blearily looks at Lafitte with hazel eyes.

“You stayed there the whole time?”

“I had some work to do,” he replies simply, and then nods at the husky patiently waiting for Sam to notice her, “Your friend here scratched and whimpered at my door until I let her in.”

The dog groans happily as Sam’s buries his massive hand in her thick fur. “Are the rest of them okay?” he asks.

Lafitte takes a long pause and then says gently, “One passed on while you slept. I had my crew wrap him in some canvas off your sled so you could pay your final respects,” he says. The crew wanted to give the animal a swift burial at sea, spouting some superstition that even Lafitte had never heard of, but Lafitte ordered them to hold off, “The rest of them are still recovering. This one included.”

Sam strokes the dog from her ears to her tail in silence as Lafitte goes back to his maps. They’d gone slightly off course to skirt an ice field that would have halted their journey for an indeterminate amount of time, and that was how they came across Sam in the first place. Lafitte shakes his head gently; it was all chance, all circumstance. Andrea would call it _fate_ , two people such as them meeting this far away from civilization, two people with a secret, undercurrent connection unknown to all those surrounding, but Lafitte has never been much a believer in things like fate. Only choices, and the consequences of those choices.

“Captain, I can’t thank you enough for pulling me off that glacier.”

“It was…” _a choice_ , “Don’t mention it.”

“I would have died. Maybe not tonight, but soon enough. And I can’t die before…not before…”

Lafitte turns slightly in his seat, not quite facing Sam but enough to see out of his peripheral vision that the man has a far-off look to him, viewing something only in his mind. The monster, perhaps. Lafitte knows better than to ask his next question but the man’s body is failing him anyway and if there’s something out there, something dangerous, then Lafitte needs to hear more, if only for the sake of his crew, “I know a few things my men would never accept as true, so I know your journey is an important one. But I’m confused, so maybe you’ll enlighten me,” Lafitte explains, “What is _one_ Winchester brother doing this far north, chasing a monster all on his own?”

Sam stops petting the dog and places his hands in his lap as he slowly looks up at Lafitte with the cause of all his ailments naked and plain in his eyes: Grief and anger and guilt. It’s killing him.

“It’s a long story.”

“Are you going anywhere?”

Sam bristles, “I don’t know if that’s a question or a threat.”

Lafitte reminds himself to relax, that Sam is no danger to him in his current state, “Apologies. Despite what you might think about _my kind_ ,” Lafitte emphasizes to make it clear to Sam what he is, no guessing games, no secrets. The man is far more perceptive than anything Lafitte’s encountered, and the fewer surprises between them the better, “I am not evil.”

“But you _are_ a monster.”

“I am.”

Sam perks up on the bed, “Then I _can_ use your help,” Lafitte raises an eyebrow and gives a short chuckle at the boldness in Sam’s request. Maybe down south, with all the food and sleep and warm surroundings a man could desire would Sam Winchester asking him a favour be enforced with a blade contaminated with dead man’s blood to his throat. But on this ship, sick and weak in body and mind, Lafitte holds all the cards and Sam either doesn’t care, or doesn’t yet seem to realize, “You know what’s at the North Pole?”

“I know what’s _rumoured_ to be there. Can’t say I’ve seen it myself.”

“But you feel a pull to it? To the Cradle?”

Lafitte sucks in a breath when Sam names it, an old instinct that serves no purpose but to give him away in this moment.

“You do,” Sam breathes triumphantly, “Tell me what you know. Everything.”

“Here’s the thing,” Lafitte starts slowly. Sam’s eagerly sitting forward with his hands in his lap, ignoring the way his dog nudges him for more attention, a hungry gleam in his eyes, “What you’re asking is…far more philosophical than that. And we — my kind, that is — aren’t organized enough ourselves to truly work out what or where this _thing_ you’re asking me about is. All we have are theories, and everybody has a slightly different one,” he explains.

“What’s yours?”

“We just met, Sam,” Lafitte smiles genially, “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When they aren’t around he practices walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> small warning for crowley being a creep @ dean. he does manage to lay a kiss on him.

His first steps, he takes with nobody knowing.

It’s a private achievement with nobody to tell, nobody that Dean _wants_ to tell anyway, to the window of his bedroom to draw aside the thick green curtain. When he looks out, it’s winter. Snow covers the ground absolutely, lines the tree branches heavily with blue-white under a full moon in the navy sky. His eyes aren’t sharp enough anymore to see the stars, but he imagines them there. His room in his grandfather’s estate overlooks the snow-topped town below, Lawrence; he chose it when he and Sam moved back a while ago for the view, having spent so much of his life in isolation and loneliness that he never wanted to forget that there were always people around.

Now, all he can think about is how they’re all so close, but will remain out of reach to him forever.

When he died, it was still summer. End of July. He missed fall. He’d have missed Ben’s birthday.

Dean tugs the curtain closed clumsily and shuffles back to his bed, barely lifting his feet off the ground to avoid any mishaps involving his legs and holding his arms out for balance the entire way. He didn’t need Sam to hold onto this time, he didn’t need anybody. But when he makes it back to his mattress and sits down he wishes he had someone to tell, someone with whom to share his triumph. Not in pride or celebration of his recovery, but to put fear into those who did this to him.

Sam and Crowley still visit, Dean ignores Crowley for the most part, past the brink of exhaustion with the man’s persistent advances. Dying, decomposing for a while, and then being rebuilt from stolen body parts does not seem to have inhibited the small man’s infatuation, and he still eyes Dean’s often naked body with a grotesque lust that compels even Sam to step in. At one point, Dean did acknowledge the dry kiss upon Crowley’s leaving one afternoon by emitting a low growl. Crowley scampered from the room, and didn’t return for the rest of that week.

When they aren’t around he practices walking. Dean is up before dawn stretching each of his joints carefully, painfully, and spends most of his day walking around the room to build his strength. To the window, then along that same wall, turning forty-five degrees and walking diagonally back to the centre where his bed is situated. Then to the other side of the room, bending over the cold wood stove and unlatching the door. His fingers, while strong, are clumsy for a while but he plays with what little trinkets he has left in this room that the others didn’t confiscate, his dexterity improving every day. As for his legs, they don’t break again, but they ache constantly from use. He spends time after his training pushing his sore knuckles into the flesh of his thighs and calves to keep them from seizing or cramping on him.

All the while, they assume he’s bed-ridden, immobile. Festering.

Sometimes, he stands at the door to his bedroom. He stands there for hours, his palms on the thick wood, fingers twitching. The spectre of his rage beside him, supporting him as he remains on his feet far longer than he normally is able to and when he finally turns the knob and pulls, the door jerks but does not open, something stopping it from the other side. Dean tries it again, tries it so hard and so forcefully that he _dares_ someone to hear him, preferably Crowley so Dean can see the fear plain on the occultist’s face when he unlocks the door and finds Dean looming over him like Death come to take him.

Eventually, though, he does hear someone’s footfalls coming down the hallway. A fast, heavy pace. It isn’t Crowley. Dean limps back to his bed in defeat; his shadow slips under the comforters with him and folds around his unsightly body like a cocoon.

They can’t keep him down, but they can keep him here, apparently.

And pretty soon, they won’t even be able to do that.

—

One morning in the middle of Dean’s balancing exercise, his door bursts open and Sam, Crowley, and even Castiel all file in at once. Dean’s on one foot, but for the sake of his ruse he collapses his balancing leg and hits the ground with a miserably hard impact that knocks him senseless with pain for a good few seconds. When he’s able to see again, he realizes his elbow smashed on the bedside table on the way down, and for a second he’s worried he’s lost his arm but it’s only bent out at a grisly angle.

“Dean, Jesus Christ,” Sam pulls Dean off the floor faster than it takes Dean to register the pain lancing up to his shoulder. He grits his teeth at the numb feeling spreading over his entire left side, “What the hell were you thinking?”

Dean meets Sam’s eyes, and then lets his attention float theatrically over to Crowley and Cas, as if in a daze, “I just wanted to look out the window.”

Castiel stalks around to the other side of the room and tugs the curtains open. A bright winter morning floods in, white and clear and crisp. It must have snowed in the night, “You should have called for someone,” he says bluntly.

_Like you’d’ve come,_ Dean tries to smile demurely as Sam’s heaves Dean up by his armpits and places him back on the bed. His eyes scan over Dean’s body for damage. He’s been practicing; he barely flinches at the sight of Dean’s mismatched limbs and scars anymore, but he still grimaces when he sees the weird angle Dean’s holding his left arm at. For once, Dean doesn’t mind.

“Does that hurt?” Sam asks.

“It isn’t comfortable.”

“Cas, what should I—”

Before Sam can finish speaking, however, Castiel is edging him out of the way, his hands on Dean’s bad arm like he’s examining a broken table leg, “It’s simply dislocated. You’re double-jointed now, for the most part,” he says tonelessly. His thumb finds a tender spot along the scar just below his elbow, and Dean hisses in pain, “Sam, give him something bite down on so I can pop it back into place.”

—

“We came to bring you down for…for your birthday,” Sam replies sheepishly. He looks at Crowley, who just shrugs like this was not his idea, and then at Cas, whose expression remains neutral.

Dean’s head is still jangling with pain, his teeth aching from clenching his jaw. He’s suffered dislocations before, when he was still alive, but he gathers that having mismatched limbs and joints doesn’t exactly lend itself well to being forced back into position. Literally two puzzle pieces from different puzzles, a square peg in a round hole, edges and corners torn and grating together.

This time, it’s not an act to sound out of it, “It’s my birthday.”

Sam smiles, as if getting through to Dean is enough reason to smile, “Yeah. We can help you down the stairs. I know you can’t eat anything, but I bought a pie from someone in town. I don’t know. Maybe you can just…smell it?”

“That sounds great,” that sounds pathetic.

“You can spend some time in the library like you used to.”

_Used to_. Dean almost snorts out loud. He and Sam haven’t celebrated birthdays since they were children, so Sam’s attempt to apply some _normalcy_ to this situation is borderline comical, save for the fact that Dean is a reanimated pile of corpse parts. Do his birthday even count when he’s already essentially died? Or has it changed to the day he woke up in a body composed of other lives? Maybe that gives him a birthday for each body part that isn’t his. Maybe he should bring that up in earnest and guilt some more _library time_ out of Sam.

It’s a fun thought, to suggest it just to see the forced cheer on Sam’s face, but it buys too much into the farce that things are okay and that they can go on like this. What Dean wants, what he’s already building anticipation for even as his arm throbs with pain and small shocks of pain make his faulty nervous system twitch, is to go down to the library like a good boy, sprint past the three of them, run down the stairs, and jump over all the furniture until he reaches the front doors of the Winchester estate. It would take a toll on him and he’d likely collapse before he makes it, but if they’re willing to bring him that much closer to his exit, and give him that much more headway on his escape, then happy birthday to Dean.


End file.
